This invention relates generally to railyards, and more particularly to determining the location of rolling stock, including railcars and locomotives, within a railyard.
Railyards are the hubs of railroad transportation systems. Therefore, railyards perform many services, for example, freight origination, interchange and termination, locomotive storage and maintenance, assembly and inspection of new trains, servicing of trains running through the facility, inspection and maintenance of railcars, and railcar storage. The various services in a railyard compete for resources such as personnel, equipment, and space in various facilities so that managing the entire railyard efficiently is a complex operation.
The railroads in general recognize that yard management tasks would benefit from the use of management tools based on optimization principles. Such tools use a current yard status and a list of tasks to be accomplished to determine an optimum order in which to accomplish these tasks.
However, any management system relies on credible and timely data concerning the present state of the system under management. In most railyards, the current data entry technology is a mixture of manual and automated methods. For example, automated equipment identification (AEI) readers and AEI computers determine the location of rolling stock at points in the sequence of operations, but in general, this information limits knowledge of rolling stock whereabouts to at most the moment at which the rolling stock arrived, the moment at which the rolling stock passes the AEI reader, and the moment at which the rolling stock departs.
In one aspect, a method is provided for identifying and determining the position of rolling stock within a railyard using a system that includes an AEI reader, a plurality of elevated electronic imaging devices and a tracking computer. The rolling stock includes a plurality of railcars and a plurality of locomotives. The method includes recording an identification pattern for each piece of rolling stock as each piece enters the railyard, compiling tracking data of the rolling stock as the rolling stock moves within the railyard using the respective identification patterns, and mapping the position of each piece of rolling stock as the rolling stock moves within the railyard.
In another aspect, a system is provided for identifying and determining the position of rolling stock within a railyard. The system includes an AEI reader, an AEI computer, a plurality of elevated electronic imaging devices, and a tracking computer. The rolling stock includes a plurality of railcars and a plurality of locomotives. The system is configured to record an identifier unique to each piece of rolling stock as each piece of rolling stock enters the railyard, compile tracking data of the rolling stock as the rolling stock moves within the railyard using respective identification patterns, and map the position of each piece of rolling stock as the rolling stock moves within the railyard.
In another aspect, a system is provided for identifying and determining the position of movable components within a yard. The system includes an AEI reader, an AEI computer, a plurality of elevated electronic imaging devices, and a tracking computer. The system is configured to record an identifier unique to an AEI tag attached to a respective movable component as each tagged component enters the yard, compile tracking data of the tagged movable components as the tagged components move within the yard using identification patterns, and map the position of each tagged movable component as the tagged component moves within the yard.
In a further aspect, a method is provided for tracking rolling stock within a railyard using a system that includes an AEI reader, a plurality of elevated electronic imaging devices, and a tracking computer. The rolling stock includes a plurality of railcars and a plurality of locomotives. The method includes uniquely identifying each piece of rolling stock as it enters the railyard using AEI readers at all yard entrances and exits, correlating each piece of the identified rolling stock with an image using an elevated electronic imaging device, tracking incremental movements of the images using tracking algorithms in the tracking computer while maintaining the correlation with the unique rolling stock identifier, and performing handoff from one elevated electronic imaging device to another electronic imaging device through position and shape correlation.